


the dreams of specimen c

by gooseberry



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Clones, Dreams, Gen, Hurt/No Comfort, Insanity, Premonition, Torture, Vaguely Influence by Inception, prescience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each dream is the same, from the snap of the general’s coat to the curves of Zack’s smile to the tumble of nesting dolls, falling down from Aerith’s shelf.</p><p>When he wakes up, floating in mako green, it is the same as another dream, and he doesn’t know whose dream it is anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dreams of specimen c

Every dream is the same.

Sephiroth comes, and comes, and comes. Always at him, always for him, always _to_ him. The dreams collapse on themselves, fold into each other like the little dolls from Bone Village; nesting dolls, one inside another inside another inside another. Each dream, inside another and another and another, is bigger than the last. 

( _Further up and further in,_ Zack says to him, his eyes sharp and his mouth bright. _Further up and further in_.)

And in each one, he kills Sephiroth, unless the general kills him first. And then they go into the next dream ( _Further up and further in, Spike. That’s the way, just keep moving._ ), a bigger dream, a brighter dream, and they do it again.

Kill, and die, and kill, and die, and kill, and die, and _kill_ \--

Each dream is the same, from the snap of the general’s coat to the curves of Zack’s smile to the tumble of nesting dolls, falling down from Aerith’s shelf.

When he wakes up, floating in mako green, it is the same as another dream, and he doesn’t know whose dream it is anymore.

x

“I went into Tifa’s room,” Cloud says, and it is a little fuzzy, a little hard to think back. He can remember climbing the stairs-- no, he can remember opening the door-- _no_ , they were on the water-tank, in the middle of the village, and Tifa was holding his hand, and they were looking at the stars-- 

“My room?” Tifa asks, and she says, “I don’t remember, Cloud.”

“You weren’t there,” he says, because she wasn’t-- they were on the water-tank, they were crossing the bridge, they were falling down a canyon, searching for a piece of heaven--

“I don’t remember, Cloud,” Tifa says, and she says, “You were never there.”

x

Further in, and further in, and it isn’t his dream; can’t be his dream. He doesn’t remember a jungle, doesn’t know a jungle. Doesn’t know the woman with the black hair and the violet eyes who cradles him to her chest, calls him, _Zack_.

He is fourteen and wants to run away. Wants something bigger and better and brighter; a city and a city’s life, fast and dirty and stinking. He wants to run away, and he _does_ run away. Too fast, too awkward, the world blurs around him. A dream, it has to be a dream, but it is too real, and when he cuts himself open on the dreams of being a SOLDIER, it pierces him through, and he bleeds on the reactor floor.

The general turns on his heel, his coat snapping, and they fall into mako.

x

Sometimes, he thinks he’s awake. Sometimes, it hurts too much, and it feels too real; sometimes, it is too slow, and he screams for hours and hours and hours. 

There’s no Sephiroth here; no Tifa, no Aerith. There are no nesting dolls, and the only face he can see is Hojo’s. 

Sometimes, when he is strapped to a cold table, his veins on fire and blood in his eyes, he can hear someone’s voice say, “Stay with me, Spike. Just hold on. Just a while longer.”

But he’s never here long enough. He always sinks back into the mako, and then he feels like he’s falling, and when he opens his eyes, the general is walking away from him, his coat snapping like a whip.

x

“The man in the black cape,” they say, “went west.”

The world is west; everything is _west_. He starts walking, and there are people following him, walking behind him.

“The general,” he tells them, “was my friend. We were together in Wutai.” 

Except he can’t remember Wutai; he doesn’t remember Wutai, or the war, or the general, except for a snapping coat, the turn of a heel.

“In the war?” Tifa asks, and Aerith reaches out, takes his hand.

“The war,” Aerith says, “was a long time ago,” and the dolls are tumbling from the shelf.

x

Sometimes, when he is chasing Sephiroth across the world, he runs into mirrors. It is the edge of something. Must be the edge of the world. Another few steps, and he would fall off the edge of the world, and fall forever ( _Maybe into mako?_ someone asks, and Aerith says, _No, into the Lifestream_ ). There is a mirror, though, smooth and cold and like the steel table beneath his back. He turns his face against the mirror, presses his cheek to it. 

It is cold, like sheets on a winter bed. He closes his eyes, and opens them, and Hojo smiles at him, says, “Good morning, Specimen C.”

x

Zack’s arm is warm and heavy where it is slung over Cloud’s shoulder. Cloud likes it, loves it. He wraps his fingers around Zack’s hand and holds it close to his chest, so Zack can’t pull away.

“We’re friends, Spike,” Zack says close to Cloud’s head.

“Spike,” Zack says, over and over, again and again, into Cloud’s ear. “Spike, Spike, we’re friends. We’re gonna get out, Spike. We’ll make it back.”

It’s warm here, in a Midgar summertime. Zack’s arm gets warmer and heavier, and Cloud can feel himself sweating beneath it. He holds onto Zack’s hand tighter, twists his fingers into Zack’s until he thinks they’re going to break, because he doesn’t want his fingers to slide away.

(Last time Zack’s fingers slid away, Cloud slid away too, into the mako a hundred feet below, and Zack had screamed after him, _Further up and further in, Spike! Further up and further in!_ )

“It’s hot,” he says, and he presses his other palm against his stomach. His palm is wet with sweat, and the salt stings when it touches his stomach. When he looks down, he is bleeding.

“Think how hot he is,” Zack says into Cloud’s ear, and Cloud looks away from his bleeding stomach.

“Who?” he asks, and when they turn around, Midgar fades into the world, fades away into mountains and jungles and little hick-towns.

“The man in the black cape,” Zack says, and he pulls his arm away from Cloud’s shoulder, and he says, “He went west, Spike.”

x

There is a place at the very bottom of his dreams. He comes here after he’s killed the general a hundred times, after he’s been thrown into mako a thousand times. It is the length and width of a bed, and it is empty.

He is alone here. He can’t hear anyone, can’t see anyone. Can’t smell or taste or feel anyone. He lies here, and he waits, and it takes a million eternities.

He touches himself sometimes, just to feel something. Runs his fingers down his arms, then up his arms, feeling the hairs on his arms catch and pull on his callouses. He folds up his legs and inspects his feet, curls his toes and his fingers. Feels his face, and wonders what he looks like.

He touches his stomach, his shoulders, the scars that are the width of two fingers and the length of his palm. The scars are the same in every dream, every time, and he presses them, feels pain stab through his gut like a weird twist of arousal.

He touches himself, sliding his thumb down the side of his cock. He rubs the heel of his hand over the head of his cock, then traces a finger around the shape of his balls. He pets his thumb against the skin between his fingers, presses his tongue up against the back of his mouth. Sweat pools in the back of his knees, drips down his legs, and his toes curl against the emptiness.

He touches himself, and touches himself, and touches himself, and he never comes.

It’s painful, twisting higher and tighter in his body, and he can feel every beat and pulse of his heart and veins. The blood roars in his ears, and he can hear his panting. When he turns his head to the side, he sees himself, staring back and back and back, and it’s mirrors reflecting on mirrors, and he doesn’t know which one of him is real, and which dream this is. And he never comes, and the pain-pleasure-pain never ends, and he thinks he will never wake up.

x

When he wakes up, it is to _pain_ and to _Hojo_ and to _mako tubes_. 

“ _No_ ,” he screams, “no no _no_ ,” and he wants to touch himself, wants to feel his own skin; wants to tear his body apart, and rip the pain out of his blood and his muscles and his bones. 

Hojo smiles at him, is always smiling at him, even when he’s saying, “It’s a failure.”

He’s the it. He was always the it. He was the it, and his mother stood in front of their house with a shotgun, stood between him and the entire world (but the general walked around her with a snap of his coat, and when she’d tried to stop him, he’d cut her through, left her bleeding in the dirt).

“No,” he cries, “ _no_.” It hurts so much, it hurts so much, it hurts so _much_ , and he only wants his mother.

The needle-prick is like a drop of water, and the mako is like ice, and pain-pleasure-pain floods though his body.

“Failure,” Hojo says, smiling over Cloud’s head, and someone is crying.

x

“You’re a mountain kid,” Zack says, and Cloud can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says, “so?”

“That’s good.” Zack’s looking down at his feet, and Cloud looks down, too. They’re standing in the sand, and this is the first time Cloud’s been on the beach; the sand feels like sandpaper, and his heels are sinking in deep.

“Why?” he asks, and he watches the sand start to creep up his legs like something living.

“You’ll have to follow him through the mountains,” Zack says. He slings his arm, his hot, heavy arm, over Cloud’s shoulders, and Cloud can feel his heels sinking further into the sand.

“Hey, Spike?” Zack asks, and Cloud wraps his arm around Zack’s waist, presses his other hand against his stomach. The blood is half-dry and tacky.

“Yeah?” he asks, and the sand is crawling past his knees, is edging up to his thighs. He can feel Zack sweating beside him, under the hot, lime-green sun.

“Take care of my girl, Spike?” Zack asks, and Cloud says, “Okay.”

x

“You awake?” someone asks; their voice is rough, sounds gravelly and tired and a lot like pain. 

He wants to say, _no_ , but he can’t open his mouth. He can’t blink, either, or move his eyes, and it feels like there’s something pressing him down, covering his chest and arms and legs. He can barely breathe, tiny harsh breaths, and there’s not enough oxygen in each one; he’s suffocating, he’s suffocating, and oh _god_ , there is something squatting on his chest, dragging broken nails down his face.

He wants to scream, and he can’t.

“Are you awake?” Zack’s voice asks, and it is coming out of Hojo’s mouth. Something black and hazy looms in the corners of Cloud’s eyes, and Hojo smiles at Cloud.

“Good,” Zack’s voice says as Hojo’s mouth moves, and Hojo is straddling Cloud’s chest, his hands cupping Cloud’s face. Cloud can’t move, can’t even close his eyes, and so Hojo’s face swims in Cloud’s eyes as he leans forward, closer and closer and closer, and kisses Cloud’s forehead.

“Good,” Hojo says again, with Cloud’s mother’s voice, and he begins to cut.


End file.
